“Bring brandy,” he commanded the nearest.  “Stand back; strip his clothes from him and empty the water from his stomach.  Here,” to a matron who had come up panting, “take his wife away.”

The good woman he addressed dropped a hurried curtsey and hustled off the woman under her wing.  She led them into the sun and wrung the water from their garments, while they sobbed and choked and wept.

“Hush thee, wench!” she said to the stricken bride.  “Hush thee, little fool; my lord Marquess will put life into him and set him on his feet before thy petticoats are dry, Lord!  Lord! what a young man!  When built Heaven such another?  And he a Duke’s son!”

“A Marquess!” cried one of the bride’s friends.  “A Duke’s son!” sobbed the bride.

“Ay, a Duke’s son!” the good woman cried, exulting further.  “And were he a King’s, the nation might be proud of him.  ’Tis his young lordship the Marquess of Roxholm.”

CHAPTER VI

“No; She has not yet Come to Court”

’Tis but a small adventure for a youth who is a strong swimmer to save a party of cits from drowning in a river, but ’twas a story much repeated, having a picturesqueness and colour because its chief figure Nature had fitted out with all the appointments which might be expected to adorn a hero.

“’Tis a pretty story, too,” said a laughing great lady when ’twas talked of in town.  “My lord Marquess dashing in and out of the river, bearing in his big white arms soused little citizen beauties and their half-drowned sweethearts, and towering in their midst giving orders—­like a tall young god in marble come to life.  The handsomest Marquess in Great Britain, and in France likewise, they tell me.”

“The handsomest man,” quoth the old Dowager Lady Storms, who had a country seat in Oxfordshire and knew more of the tale than any one else.  “The handsomest man, say I, for it chanced that I drove by the river at that moment and saw him.”

And then—­freedom of speech being the fashion in those days and she an old woman—­she painted such a picture of his fine looks, his broad shoulders, and the markings of his muscles under his polished skin, as, being repeated and spread abroad, as gossip will spread itself, fixed him in the minds of admirers of manly beauty and built him a reputation in the world of fashion before he had entered it or even left his books.

When he did leave them and quitted the University, it was with honour to himself and family, and also with joy to his Governour and Chaplain Mr. Fox, who had attended him.  At his coming of age there were feastings and bonfires in five villages again, and Rowe rang the bells at Camylott Church with an exultant ardour which came near to being his final end, and though seventy years of age, he would give up his post to no younger man, and actually blubbered aloud when ’twas delicately suggested that his middle-aged son should take his place to save him fatigue.